Just thought it would be a cute title:
‘seeing red’. Because, well, that is
the last thing that would come to
my mind, regarding these student
presentations at SCI-Arc. Maybe
the fact that Erin’s non-architecture
tag-along guest should have had
me ‘seeing red’ (as she impeded
me both psychologically and
professionally; “how to host a
At the review.
charming and bubbly guest/ visitor,
and focus on the ‘oeuvres’ at hand?”). But no, not even that. But…
red… red it was, the last exhibit-review of the week. ‘RE(a)D;
Dangerous Liaisons: Artificial Inseminations and the Featureless’.
Here is some of the course description:
“feature… artificial… inseminate… reflex… reflexive… nocturnal…
analogy…
Is there such a phenomenon as the ‘featureless’? If so, how might we as
architects productively engage such a condition?
In a world increasingly dominated by phenomena of overabundance, saturation,
and the ‘hyper’,… the featureless lurks as a forgotten, mute, and perceptuallyinactive feature…
Through ‘artificial insemination’,… we will move towards reflexive architectures
and landscape-architectures of flux, responsiveness, and cyclic
distillations…
A ‘Museum for Things RE(a)D’ and a ‘Roadside Motel’ will occupy an oscillating
and vulnerable terrain…
Phenomenal modeling, time-lapse photography, behavioral notations,
analogous constructs, etc….
Analogic, metaphoric, narrative, syntactic, parametric modeling, gestural
interpretation, appropriation, diagramming, content-to-form, form-to-program,
plagiarism, and automatic processes…
The research and spatial production of a RED should be thoughtful, but prone
to disaster… The results may require architecture and landscape strategies
which cannot be finished, but exist in time…

are fictions of fen-om:
[www.fen-om.com]

Red.

Red.

Annually, desert enthusiasts, retirees, and ‘passers through’… occupy the terrain… that is
the Salton Sea… The occupants situate themselves for varying periods of time… The desert
is always there…
Many experiences, phenomena, and physicality lend themselves to various forms of
photography. Others resist. Systematic documentation captures and fixes quantitative details,
while a wandering camera might expose something else…
[Students] are to produce… six time-lapse photographs… (three photographs where the
camera is stationary [‘found’ space], and 3… where the camera is moving [‘constructed’
space]… [Two expanded panoramas, night and daytime, should emphasize] some aspect
of the sky, ground, or both… and should take into account the horizontal and vertical, the
near and far, [emphasizing] some aspect of the situation…
In… ‘Constructing a Collection’ [students] are asked to assemble ‘things’ [to be exhibited]…
Objects and/or non-physical entities which exhibit a particular re(a)dness… Things which
are strictly ‘red’ [or] things which are ‘read’... There are no innocent choices… The objects
and/or phenomena will both define and be defined by the collection…
[Students] will subsequently write a specific (and provocative) program structure…
[Museum=] public/ non-collection + public/ collections + non-public/ non-collections…
[Motel=] reception, manager’s quarters, guest rooms, services, pool, courtyard… The
program framework [may necessarily expand or contract]… [Inspiration might be derived
from] the ‘archetypalness’ of the desert,…the range of conditions which ‘structure’ the Salton
Sea,… the programs themselves (museum= collecting, hoarding, recontextualizing, body
motility; motel= displacement of domestic practices, leisure, constantly-emerging social
structure),… personal ambitions, and other agencies…”
In this vertical studio (elective course where undergraduates and graduate students work together),
Professor Perry Kulper has managed to bring together fantasy, philosophical issues, an opportunity
to escape the quotidian urbanism, and, of course, the color ‘red’. It was certainly eye-catching, and
an indicator of how attractive ‘fun’ can be. Beginning with the experiential voyage to the Salton
Sea, all of the participants in this course seem to have delighted in their involvement. Some of
the solutions ended up being a bit more quirky than others, some were rigorous within the jumpy
framework, and some simply sparkled a bit more (with some extra cleverness, some ‘je ne sais…’).
Particularly captivating was one take on the museum, for the purpose of housing/displaying dangerous
contemporary environments. I have lost my notes, so I’ll have to navigate from memory. Just as well,
I guess. This project included exhibits where the displayed objects were necessary to access certain
areas of the museum. Of course, the focus (or at least in my mind) was ‘danger’ (our ability to detect
red immediately being genetically coded). One memorable exhibit was that-one-that required the use
of a red gas-mask in order to explore an area contaminated with germ/ chemical agents. Recently,
after searching for ‘red’ on the Internet, I was struck by the kitsch-consumerist quality of the color red.
Not all products come in red, even though they could (or, at least, we don’t always think/ remember
them as ‘red’; here goes memory again). Lemons and the noon sky, of course, aren’t. Strawberries
are, but not always. And fire, could it be? Many things could be painted red (most notably, vehicles).
What red things would one display, in a museum for red objects? Would it matter, if they were really
red (after all, the brightness of red embodies it with a certain amount of falsity). Another student
project, I remember, focused on red lights and fogs and atmospheric effects; all appropriate parts
of a desert scene. And there were the instruments of torture, simply painted red (unexpectedly). In

Red.

Red.

Red.

Red.

many cases it seemed that the very lively ‘other’ (‘wow’) factors of the project seemed to occlude
architectural intent. A lot of interesting red stuff, but slight architectural intent. Some visions were
wonderful, however, associating deserted regions and topographies, or reacting to the desert in the
fashion of local fauna and flora. Erin had once focused some architecture-design on the Salton Sea,
and, coincidentally, this RED studio work had been recommended as worthy of review… This is what
she saw, and remembered:

Red pulling eyes to it, amidst blue/ grey/ flow of the surrounding studio reviews. Walking
through one cool-grey-blue-black review after the next, one couldn’t help the instinctual
split-second “STOP” of the “REaD” review. The Morphemic/ morphotic and fluid majority,
casting the appropriate contrast for this red minority to Pop. And so it was, RED diagrams/
drawings/ models/ diagrams/ studies/ experiments on the walls at Sci Arc… Salton Sea
as the Subject Site. Salton Sea in the same blue-grey-flow-dust-smooth-mood of the other
reviews (and yes, with it’s own moments of deconstruction: deconstructed remains of years
past, years not so long ago…. Grey, blue, salty, cracking, white, Red (REaD) seems the
right (wRITE) ingredient to yield Paradox to the forefront of the screen.
Power/ Life… Life(Death)>>> Blood/Violence >(Passion)> Love (Hate)> Power (et al….)+=
and all that sticky stuff: iconic/ representational-symbolic-etc etc…. Blood transformed
through optical networks appears as is seen as RED = Nature + Optical + other= above
readings
Programmed we are. Stop at RED.
STOP
LACAN and the art of observation
STRUCTURALISM as relates to VISUAL readings
MIRROR STAGE yes I saw myself in numerous parts (most potent = red+salton sea (an
excellent embodiment of “paradox”)
METONYMY> carrying language along it’s syntagmatic axis> corresponds to the
displacement of desire (see: Freud/ dream work).
METAPHOR> carries language along it’s paradigmatic axis (the axis of substitution which
corresponds to the condensing (evaporating sea leaving remains of salt?)
RED = “THE” over(?)-determined nodal-point in this space (then/ now)
stop
(I am becoming evermore cryptic. Yes. I see this. Ok.
“The research and spatial production of a RED should be thoughtful, but prone to
disaster”…